With Broken Wings (2013)

Melancholy

Thank You. Two simple words that should make you smile. Yet they don’t. If anything, they make me want to cry.

I shouldn’t have to be thanked for putting my family above the rest of the world. I shouldn’t feel as if being there and loving the people that have never done anything but the same is a chore, an option.

That those who have been nothing but supportive and loving my whole life, the ones who can get me to smile when it should be the last thing on my mind and whom I can never seem to stop talking about, are less important than an education or friends I see all the time.

Yes, my education is important but if it came down to it, school could wait. I can always go back to it and finish where I left off, I can’t go back in time and bring someone back from the dead. Friends mean a lot to me, that I won’t deny, but they will still be here when I get back.

If they’re true friends, they will understand that spending the time I have left with the people who mean the most to me is something I may never again get the chance to do and that we can hang out another time.

I am not abandoning you or leaving and cutting off all ties forever, I am simply taking a break to soak in every last ray of sunshine that is my family while I can and I will come back to you when I am able. Sometimes I just need a break from feelings you know?

Being friends with you is great and I love it, but right now I just can’t bring myself to devote the amount of energy and attention to our interactions that you deserve. I would rather just take a week to cry myself to sleep and be able to treat you the way a good friend should, cherished and made to feel important and loved, rather than giving only half of what you should be getting and having you feel as if I am simply not interested in our conversations.

So I’m sorry.

I’m sorry if my isolation made you feel as if I didn’t care, I’m sorry if you felt like it was your fault, and I should have explained better. But what can I say when I can’t even seem to feel anything other than emptiness and tears?

How do I explain how much this hurts when every time I open my mouth, nothing comes out? How can I show you that I simply cannot focus on anything else because his face is all I see in my mind, all the time, when I cannot show you the inside of my brain?

Who can I talk to when no one understands but everyone pretends to know what it’s like? How can I say that I don’t want to talk when all you do is pester me to share feelings that I don’t yet understand? How can I explain better, when nothing makes sense to me right now?

I wish that I could explain how much I want you to know that this isn’t your fault. I wish I could bring myself to feel anything long enough to apologize and mean it.

I wish I could take back all of the things I said because you pushed me before I was ready and they were all things I didn’t mean but can’t erase. I wish I could mend the strings of friendship that you cut, but they have been frayed and torn so many times that I fear they would only snap again one day when I needed you most.

I can’t do that to myself, or to you, especially not after having been through that just now and feeling it in my bones months later. Those kinds of wounds never heal and I am afraid that I already have too many to risk another. I am afraid that to try would only end in pain on both sides and I can’t afford to let myself shatter. I cannot ask you to do that to yourself either, it would be worse than cruel and that is one thing that I like to think I am not.

So I know that maybe my priorities make no sense to you but they have been drilled into my subconscious for far too long and far too hard to simply let go of now. Maybe one day I would have molded them into something new, under different circumstances, which would have pleased you. But today is not that day and things have happened the way they did.

I cannot change that no matter how much I want to.  

So again I profess my most sincere apologies for the way that things played out but to ask me to push away my family just days after having lost one of the closest and most important parts of it, one of the most vital and instrumental parts of my childhood and everything that I am, after having had to watch my family suffer through that alone for months and not be able to be there and know that it had been killing me is simply not something I am capable of doing.

That’s like asking me to stop breathing, to suck it up and give blood even though I am terrified of needles or to saw off my own arm while you looked on from the sidelines, I simply am not physically, mentally or emotionally capable of doing that.

I am truly sorry that I did not talk about it with you like you wanted me to but what am I supposed to say? I don’t know how the fuck I’m supposed to feel because it’s like someone has poured ice in my veins and I feel like a bitch but I just can’t bring myself to care about anything else right now?

Somehow I don’t think that would have gone down well either.

And I know that your life hasn’t been easy either, and you have never had to go through this pain so I know that you only want to help, but sympathy is something I don’t need right now. I loathe that you can’t seem to understand that but I can’t seem to find the words or the courage to say this to your face, so you continue to reassure me that things get better when I’m stuck in this black hole and can’t even seem to hope that one day I may find a light to lead me to a way out.

You tell me that it doesn’t hurt so much in time, a lie and this much I know, but did you ever think that maybe I don’t want it to stop hurting so? That maybe the pain reminds me that he was real and keeps me humble?

That maybe it is like a scar, one that shows the world I have survived but that to me is simply a reminder of all the things I don’t want to forget no matter how much they hurt to think about? That maybe I am more afraid of the pain fading because it means forgetting and moving on?

No.

And that is why I can’t talk to you, because you see, you don’t really understand because you are not me, your circumstances are not the same and you do not see that my way of coping is so different to what you are trying to tell me that your method is only proving to cause me more pain that I don’t need but can’t bring myself to ask you to stop.

So I have to let things play out, you decided on your path and now, well I know that things shouldn’t have ended the way they did but it isn’t what you think that matter anymore so my priorities will likely never change. I love my family, as I should, more than anything else in the world and after losing the glue that held us together, I can’t even think about losing anyone else. I

know that inevitably one day a lot of people I love will have to pass away but until that day I want to make the most of what we have and I’d like to spend as much of the sparse time we get together to the best of my abilities.

If that means not seeing or talking to friends for a few months, so be it, we can catch up later and I’m sure you’d like time to spend with your other friends as well. I am not the only one you know, the sun that you orbit around, and maybe time apart will make it easier for us to see where we stand.

Maybe some time away will allow us to be better friends when we come back. I know that it is hard but I have to do what I have to do and right now that is to make as many memories as I can so that when I lose anyone, I will have times to think back on and smile about on those days when I can’t help but feel lost, alone and absolutely broken to bits despite all the good friends around me.

Because as much as I love you all, you’re not my family and you just don’t get my situation the way those who have been through it with me do. Sometimes I just need to speak to someone who understands or see their faces and know that next time I leave they will still be around when I come back again. I just need to know that I haven’t lost them all and letting them go is so much harder now.

I hope you understand, because I have to love you anyway, and inevitably, also let you go. Don’t let my attitude phase you, it’s the expression in  my eyes that contradict the words I say and if you know me well enough you will start to see that no matter how much I try not to let it out, you mean a hell of a lot to me and I would hate to lose you too.

You don’t mean less, you simply have more time left.